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Institutional Assessment: The Art of Self-Reflection
8/30/2006
Another challenge, of course, is the quality and uniformity of the data itself. Whenever independent colleges and universities share information, it’s essential that the data exist in similar formats, in order to prevent errors and other reporting glitches. The problem, at least today, is that few schools seem to adhere to those formats espoused by the National Center for Education Statistics. Then too, Provenza at Flagler insists that statistics from the federal government frequently come with errors; he says it’s impossible to determine accurate numbers when some of the base information is wrong. (He adds that while his own administrators value clean data, even they make similar mistakes from time to time.)
AT UC-DAVIS, assessment systems
are a homegrown spin on a commercial
product from Inf'Ed International. The
rollout will take just over two years.
Finally, of course, is the issue of time to market. Solid, battle-tested institutional assessment programs don’t sprout overnight; assessment endeavors need time to settle in to the everyday ebb-andflow of an organization before they can make a difference. At WWU, where the WELS solution works in tandem with SunGard to evaluate traditional and notso- traditional facets of campus life, university officials experienced years of frustration with inefficient institutional assessment tools before they created and sharpened a solution of their own. “It wasn’t easy, but we’re finally happy with the system we have in place,” says Castro. “Now it’s up to us to use it in a way that makes it all worthwhile.”
::WEBEXTRA:: At CT2006, panelists from MIT discussed how to assess the effectiveness of teachingtechnologies. Listen in here.
Matt Villano is senior contributing editor of this publication.
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